ATP NY '09: Iron & Wine

For whatever ridiculous reason I may be able to come up with, I have never managed to see Iron & Wine in concert. I have enjoyed his music for years but this was the first time I was seeing the folk singer in person and I was quite excited about the prospects of it.

Playing completely by himself Sam Beam was a positively magnetic force on stage. He opened his set with his fantastic cover of the Postal Service's "Such Great Heights", took some requests, and joked with the crowd between sets. It was a quiet intimate performance that would have felt more appropriate in a coffee shop then at a huge world renowned festival, but here we were hanging off of Beam's every note and every lyric.

It was a beautiful set, during which you could hear a pin drop through most of the expansive room. The fans were reverential and were rewarded by a set far bigger then we ever could have seen elsewhere.